Airpower in Theory & Practice

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At present, the United States stands at a moment of opportunity. Our nation has a clear lead on re-usable launch vehicles (RLVs). The highly visible demonstrations of SpaceX and Blue Origin are just the observable portion of a much larger iceberg of commercial ambitions and industrial capabilities. With the right policies, regulation, incentives, and anchor…

Today’s Air Force fleet structure is in the midst of an identity crisis, full of contradictions and built upon a multi-role fighter foundation. Despite this, the Air Force Future Operating Concept document categorizes its current force structure as a high-low mixture.

On July 27 of last year, over 1,000 experts and researchers – including Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak – signed an open letter warning of the perils of using artificial intelligence in the military and expressing their worry that lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS) would “become tomorrow’s Kalashnikovs.” They hence called for…

In September 1972, the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) reviewed the case of Air Force General John D. Lavelle and determined that General Lavelle had conducted unauthorized bombing missions over North Vietnam and ordered the falsification of post-mission reports. As a result, the SASC demoted him to major general in retirement. In August 2010, after…

This article was originally posted at The Bar Napkin. “Even small groups of combatants, such as a handful of enemy troops manning a mortar position, may eventually be deemed worthy of a PGM [precision-guided munition] in some circumstances.” Though the above statement sounds like some visionary revelation out of Operation Desert Storm, it is not;…

The battle against ISIL has been brutal. The government in Iraq is barely holding together, ISIL appears to be in control of northern Iraq and Syria, and Libya is grappling with its own ISIL problem. On the surface, there appears to be little that the United States and its allies can do to assure basic…

[This is a continuation of a previous article in a series] There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still. Franklin D. Roosevelt The founding fathers of military aviation had an uphill battle in advocating the value of airpower to their doubtful Army and Navy counterparts. Though their approaches (and…

Just the other day, a conversation amongst a small group of Army, Navy, and Air Force officers turned to the topic of recent U.S. Air Force (USAF) modernization and recapitalization efforts, sparked by the issue of A-10 and MQ-1 divestment and turning to debating the point of the F-35. The consensus from the non-Air Force…

This is the second part of a two-part article on French airpower in current contingencies. For a country like France, the strategic context in the short- to mid-term will probably be the continuation of the current era of protracted interventions, necessary but unfortunately non-decisive, in Africa (as leading nation) and the Middle East (as part…

The Strategic Interdiction trilogy is the outcome of three years of intermittent study of logistic vulnerabilities of the People’s Republic of China. Current airpower strategy regarding China tends to revolve around a replay of the DESERT STORM air campaign, a technique manifestly unsuitable for use against a major power like China, to say nothing of…

This article was originally posted on The Strategy Bridge. We are sharing it here due to its outstanding contribution to airpower dialogue. The Army of 2025 and Beyond will effectively employ lethal and non-lethal overmatch against any adversary to prevent, shape, and win conflicts and achieve national interests. It will leverage cross-cultural and regional experts…

The past decade has witnessed a revolution in the use of remotely operated systems by the UK’s Armed Forces. Nowhere has this been more evident – or controversial – than in the air domain. Debate over the nomenclature of such systems – known variously as Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs), Uninhabited Air Systems (UASs), Remotely Piloted…